This day in history...

Was away yesterday and didn't get to add this...
On May 26, 1969, the crew of Apollo 10 become the fastest people in human history. On their return from orbiting the moon, astronauts Gene Cernan, Thomas Stafford and John Young (left to right in photo) achieve a top speed of 24,791 miles per hour, a speed that has never been exceeded since. This is because (there's certainly a reason that can be found in the navigational computations but I can't find it) Apollo 10 was given a return trajectory of 42 hours, compared to the 56 hour return time programmed for other moon missions. For comparison, the International Space Station orbits at roughly 17,500 miles per hour.

 

On May 27, 1863, Union troops under General Nathaniel Banks settle into siege operations against Port Hudson, LA. Nine months earlier, Banks had taken Baton Rouge, and Confederate troops withdrawing to the north settled into a much more defensable position at Port Hudson, overlooking the Mississippi River. Banks was ordered in early May to march to General Grant's aid at Vicksburg, a march that would require defeating the Port Hudson defenses. His initial assault on May 22 failed, and the Yanks settled into siege mode. Confederate General Franklin Gardner would hold his position until July 9, when word reached him that Vicksburg had fallen. Gardner's surrender ended - at 48 days - the longest siege in U.S. military history to that point.


On May 27, 1998, Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in federal prison and fined $75,000. Michael and Lisa Fortier are the mostly-forgotten accomplices to the Oklahoma City bombing. Michael helped Timothy McVeigh scout the Murrah Building in advance, while Lisa helped McVeigh create the fake ID he used to rent the van used in the bombing. In exchange for testifying against McVeigh and Terry Nichols, Michael received a reduced sentence (officially, for failing to warn authorities of a terrorist plot), while Lisa was granted immunity. He was release from prison in 2006 and entered the Witness Relocation Program under a new identity.

 

On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act into law. The law cleared the way for treaties with numerous indigenous tribes, mostly in the Southern US, who were compelled to give up their land and be relocated west of the Mississippi. Some tribes received monetary payments in addition to the land swap. Over the next 12 years, roughly 60,000 indigents representing 18 tribes would be moved. While some went peacefully, several did not, most notably the Seminoles, who went to war for nearly 7 years against the US and were nearly exterminated, and the Choctaws, who's forced march to Oklahoma came to be known as the Trail of Tears. Most historians see the Indian Removal Act and its results as second only to slavery in terms of mass injustices perpetrated by the American government.


On May 28, 1905, the Imperial Japanese Navy annihilates the Russian Baltic Fleet at Tsushima Staight, a narrow body of water between Japan and the Korean coast. The most decisive defeat of the pre-aircraft era of iron warships, the Russians would have 21 ships sunk, including 7 capital ships, and 5 more ships captured, with more than 5,800 casualties and 6,000 sailors captured. Japanese losses were limited to 3 torpedo boats sunk and about 800 killed and wounded. The defeat forces the Russians to the negotiating table, ending the 19-month Russo-Japanese War. (note: the painting depicts Admiral Togo aboard his flagship Mikasa raising a flag that denotes the letter "Z". It was a pre-arranged signal meaning, "The fate of the Empire rests on the outcome of this battle. Let each man do his utmost." 36 years later, Admiral Nagumo would raise a "Z flag" over the aircraft carrier Akagi as the launching of planes for the Pearl Harbor attack began. Some navy historians claim it was the actual Togo flag, but that is disupted.)


On May 28, 1892, the Sierra Club is established. California environmentalist John Muir (right, with Theodore Roosevelt in 1906) was in the home stretch of a decades-long effort that led to the designation of Yosemite National Park, when he was approached about starting a similar protection effort for the Sierra Nevadas region. Modeled after the eastern Appalachian Mountain Club, the Sierra Club would quickly follow with campaigns for the designation of Rainier and Glacier National Parks, and the preservation of the redwood forests of coastal California. One of the world's oldest environmental protection organizations, the Sierra Club has also been one of the nation's leaders in the promotion of outdoor recreation, especially hiking and mountain climbing. The club has become increasingly political since the 1950's, advocating for stringent regulations on coal mining, hydro-electricity and nuclear power, and other liberal causes.

 

Just before 2am on May 29, 1914, the Canadian ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the St. Lawrence River following a collision in heavy fog. The Empress had departed Quebec the previous evening bound for Liverpool when she was rammed by the SS Storstad, a Norwegian collier (right, after the collision). The weather was clear when the two bridge crews sighted each other from several miles apart, but within minutes a fog bank developed and completely obscured visibility. Moments later, the Storstad rammed the Empress in her starboard side, and in just 14 minutes the liner foundered with 1,012 lives lost, the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history. A board of inquiry would blame Storstad Captain Thomas Andersen for poor navigation in the fog, although Andersen was asleep in his cabin at the time of the collision. It was also noted that Storstad's inverted prow, a common design feature of the time, acted like a chisel driven into the side of the Empress below the waterline. Ship designers immediately began phasing out the inverted prow.


On May 29, 1852, Jenny Lind gives her last performance in the United States. "The Swedish Nightingale", Lind is widely recognized as one of the premier vocalists (soprano) of the 19th century. Performing mostly in her native Sweden and Great Britain, she began performing at age 10 and had already retired from opera at age 29 when she was approached by promoter P.T. Barnum about touring America. The two agreed to an 18-month, 150-performance tour, with Lind accepting a set fee per show on condition that additional proceeds go to charity. The tour opened in NYC in September, 1850 (just Lind performing operatic selections with piano accompaniment), and the American press was soon declaring the country to be experiencing "Lindmania." At some venues, ticket demand was so great that they were sold by Barnum at auction. Within a few months, Lind had tired of Barnum's relentless promotional schemes, and she exercised a severance clause in the contract (parting amicably with Barnum) and finished the tour on her own. The tour ended in NYC as it had begun, and Lind rarely performed after that, becoming a vocals professor at London's Royal College of Music. She died in 1887 at age 67.


On May 29, 1945, the Consolidated B-32 Dominator flies its first combat mission. The Army Air Corps approached Consolidated for a long-range heavy bomber prototype in 1940, mostly as a fallback for Boeing's already-in-development B-29. Consolidated drew heavily on the design of its highly successful B-24 Liberator bomber in designing the B-32, but by the time the first were ready for delivery (there were several delays), the B-29 was already a proven success. The USAAC accepted a short production run of B-32's and assigned them a test combat schedule, and on 5/29 a flight of 3 Dominators bombed a Japanese supply depot in the Phillipines. Although Consolidated would deliver 118 B-32's only a handful would see combat, and all had been scrapped by 1949. No examples of the plane exist today.

 

On May 30, 1814, the 1814 Treaty of Paris between France and the Sixth Coalition brings that phase of the Napoleanic Wars to an end. Napoleon had abdicated his throne in early May and ordered to the island of Elba in exile. Despite nearly 25 years of warfare, the Coalition (Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden and Portugal) were generous in the terms of the Treaty, restoring the House of Bourbon (King Louis XVIII, below) to power with the same borders recognized in 1792, and also returned some of the colonial possessions taken during the wars.


On May 30, 1943, Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz II concentration camp, where he is assigned as Chief Medical Officer. A brilliant student, Mengele earned his PhD in anthropology at age 24, joined the Nazi Party at age 26 (1937) and was awarded a cum laude doctorate in medicine at age 27 for his thesis on the genetic factors that cause a cleft chin. Fanatically antisemite, Mengele was assigned to Auschwitz and over the next two years, earned the nickname "the Angel of Death" for his genetic experiments on the Jewish inmates. He frequently removed healthy organs from healthy inmates without the benefit of anasthesia, injected chloroform directly in the hearts of patients, and injected chemicals directly into the eyes of other patients to change the color. He was especially fascinated with identical twins; among the more diabolic of his experiments was his sewing together of twins back-to-back to see if they would spontaneously conjoin. Mengele also frequently assigned himself the task of inspecting new arrivals and choosing those who would be immediately sent to the gas chambers. Captured by the Americans in June 1945, his captors failed to identify him as an SS member due to faulty records and he was released, actually living in occupied Germany for the next four years. He escaped to South America in 1947 where he lived in Argentina and later Brazil until his death (he suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned) in 1979.

 

On May 31, 1951, the Uniform Code of Military Justice takes effect as the legal system of the United States Armed Forces. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate land and sea forces. Congress gave the army the power to oversea its own legal affairs with the Articles of War, passed in 1806. The Navy passed its own Articles of Governance (informally called Rocks and Shoals) at about the same time, and the UCMJ essentially brought the two systems together.


On May 31, 1911, the RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Titanic is launched at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the days before overseas air travel, European steamship lines were in a virtual arms race to provide the fastest, yet most comfortable, Atlantic Ocean crossing. In attempting to surpass their main rival, Cunard Lines, fellow British company White Star Lines commissioned the Olympic Class of steamships, which would be the largest and fastest ships built to date. Building the first two (Olympic and Titanic) of the 3 ship class simultaneously would force Harland and Wolff to completely retool its yard, replacing 3 smaller slipways with 2 that could accomodate the massive ships. Nine people died and nearly 250 were injured during her construction and fitting out. Following White Star tradition, the Titanic was neither formally named nor christened at its launch; as a Harland and Wolff worker wrote to a friend,"We just built her and shoved her in." Harland and Wolff still operates today, with 5 shipyards throughout the British Isles and about 800 employees.


On May 31, 1977, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is completed. Authorized about a year after oil was first discovered near Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's northern slope, the pipeline is constructed of 48" diameter Japanese pipe (no American company manufacture pipe that large at the time) and is 800 miles long, terminating at Valdez, Alaska, on Prince William Sound. Actual construction didn't begin until 1975, delayed by legal and environmental objections. At peak delivery in 1988, the pipeline was transporting about 2.1 million barrels of oil per day (it takes about 2 weeks for oil to travel the full route). Today, a little less than half a million barrels daily is delivered.

 

On June 3, 1979, a loss of drilling mud circulation causes a blowout in the Pemex Sedco 135 offshore drilling rig, located in the Bay of Campeche off the Yucatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the next 10 months, more than 3 million barrels of oil will spill into the Gulf, the largest spillage due to an offshore rig accident to that date (it has since been exceeded only by Deepwater Horizon). Though the rig was only in about 50 meters of water, the well itself was nearly 12,000 feet deep. The spill impacted several marine species, most notably the rare Kemp's ridley sea turtle (right), which nests almost exclusively in the region. An emergency relocation of thousands of already-hatched baby sea turtles to an unimpacted area of the Gulf shore prevented a potential extinction event.


On June 3, 1969 in the South China Sea, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne runs over the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans, splitting the smaller ship in two. Seventy-four American sailors are killed. The Evans, a late WWII-era destroyer with 11 battle stars to her credit, was escorting the Melbourne during a joint antisubmarine exercise. Around 3 am, the Evans was ordered to reposition itself in relationship to the Melbourne (the fourth such order of the night to the American ship). The first 3 maneuvers were without incident, but this time, the Evans cut too close across the Melbourne's bow. The bow section of the Evans sank immediately, causing the 74 deaths. The stern section (center-left in the photo) remained afloat but was later scuttled. A joint board of inquiry later found the commanders of both ships to be at fault, though the Australian captain was later cleared at court martial. The Evans' captain and two junior officers who had the watch when the collision occurred were found guilty of dereliction of duty.